By Michael Pool
Texas Two-Step
By Robert J. Randisi
Upon My Soul
Souls of the Dead
Envy the Dead
By Rob Riley
Thin Blue Line
By Sandra Ruttan
The Spying Moon (*)
By Charles Salzberg
Devil in the Hole
Swann’s Last Song
Swann Dives In
Swann’s Lake of Despair
Swann’s Way Out
Second Story Man
By Scott Loring Sanders
Shooting Creek and Other Stories
By Linda Sands
3 Women Walk Into a Bar (TP only)
Grand Theft Cargo
Precious Cargo
By Ryan Sayles
The Subtle Art of Brutality
Warpath
Let Me Put My Stories In You
Albatross
By John Shepphird
The Shill
Kill the Shill
Beware the Shill
By Nathan Singer
Blackchurch Furnace
By Anthony Neil Smith
Yellow Medicine
Hogdoggin’
The Baddest Ass
Holy Death
All the Young Warriors
Once a Warrior
Worm
Psychosomatic
The Drummer
Choke on Your Lies
XXX Shamus
By Liam Sweeny
Welcome Back, Jack
Presiding Over the Damned (*)
By Art Taylor, editor
Murder Under the Oaks: Bouchercon Anthology 2015
By Ian Truman
Grand Trunk and Shearer
Down with the Underdogs (*)
By James Ray Tuck, editor
Mama Tried 1
Mama Tried 2 (*)
By Nathan Walpow
The Logan Triad
One Last Hit
The Manipulated
By Lono Waiwaiole
Wiley’s Lament
Wiley’s Shuffle
Wiley’s Refrain
Dark Paradise
Leon’s Legacy
By George Williams
Inferno and Other Stories
Zoë
The Selected Letters of the Late Biagio Serafim Sciarra
By Eric Miles Williamson
East Bay Grease
By Jim Wilsky
Sort ’Em Out Later (*)
By TG Wolff
Exacting Justice
By Frank Zafiro and Eric Beetner
The Backlist
The Short List
The Getaway List (*)
By Frank Zafiro and Jim Wilsky
Blood on Blood
Queen of Diamonds
Closing the Circle (*)
Down & Out: The Magazine
Volume 1 Issue 1: Reed Farrel Coleman (featured author)
Volume 1 Issue 2: Bill Crider (featured author)
Volume 1 Issue 3: Barry Lancet (featured author)
Published by ABC Group Documentation, an imprint of Down & Out Books
By Alec Cizak
Down on the Street
Breaking Glass
By Brandon Daily
A Murder Country (*)
By Grant Jerkins
Abnormal Man
A Scholar of Pain
By Robert Leland Taylor
Through the Ant Farm
Published by All Due Respect, an imprint of Down & Out Books
By Greg Barth
Selena: Book One
Diesel Therapy: Selena Book Two
Suicide Lounge: Selena Book Three
Road Carnage: Selena Book Four
Everglade: Selena Book Five
By Eric Beetner
Nine Toes in the Grave
By Phil Beloin Jr.
Revenge is a Redhead
By Math Bird
Histories of the Dead and Other Stories
In Loco Parentis (*)
By Paul D Brazill
The Last Laugh: Crime Stories
Last Year’s Man
By Sarah M. Chen
Cleaning Up Finn
By Alec Cizak
Crooked Roads: Crime Stories
Manifesto Destination
By Pablo D’Stair and Chris Rhatigan
You Don’t Exist
By C.S. DeWildt
Kill ’Em with Kindness
Love You to a Pulp
By Paul Greenberg
Dead Guy in the Bathtub: Stories
By Paul Heatley
FatBoy
By Jake Hinkson
The Deepening Shade
By Preston Lang
The Sin Tax
Sunk Costs
By Tom Leins
Repetition Kills You (*)
By Marietta Miles
Route 12
By Mike Miner
Prodigal Sons
By Mike Monson
A Killer’s Love
Criminal Love and Other Stories
Tussinland
What Happens in Reno
By Chris Orlet
A Taste of Shotgun
By Matt Phillips
Three Kinds of Fool
Accidental Outlaws
By Rob Pierce
The Things I Love Will Kill Me Yet: Stories
Uncle Dust
Vern in the Heat
With the Right Enemies
By Michael Pool
Debt Crusher
By Chris Rhatigan
Race to the Bottom
Squeeze
The Kind of Friends Who Murder Each Other
By Ryan Sayles
I’m Not Happy ’til You’re Not Happy: Crime Stories
By Ryan Sayles and Chris Rhatigan
Two Bullets Solve Everything
By Daniel Vlasaty
A New and Different Kind of Pain
Only Bones
By William E. Wallace
Dead Heat with the Reaper
Hangman’s Dozen
Published by Shotgun Honey, an imprint of Down & Out Books
By Hector Acosta
Hardway
By Rusty Barnes
Knuckledragger
Ridgerunner
By Aaron Philip Clark
The Science of Paul
A Healthy Fear of Man
By Angel Luis Colón
The Fury of Blacky Jaguar
Blacky Jaguar Against the Cool Clux Cult
By Marie S. Crosswell
Texas, Hold Your Queens
By DeLeon DeMicoli
Les Cannibales
By Chris DeWildt
Suburban Dick
By Christopher Irvin
Federales
By Nick Kolakowski
A Brutal Bunch of Heartbroken Saps
Slaughterhouse Blues
By Preston Lang
The Carrier
By R. Daniel Lester
Dead Clown Blues
By Lawrence Maddos
Fast Bang Booze
By Mike Miner
Hurt Hawks
By Tom Pitts
Knuckleball
By Ryan Sayles
Goldfinches
By Max Sheridan
Dillo
By Albert Tucher
The Place of Refuge
The Hollow Vessel (*)
(*) Coming soon
Back to TOC
Here’s a sample from Terrence McCauley’s The Devil Dogs of Belleau Wood. Net proceeds benefit the Semper Fi Fund.
Chapter 1
Belleau Wood near Paris, France
June, 1918
As the Kaiser’s shells exploded around me, I lay as flat and still
as I could behind the fallen tree trunk.
I didn’t move and was too scared to try. Chunks of earth and rock and wood rained down on my back. The shock from every shell rattled my soul. I tried to scratch and claw and burrow my way as deep as I could beneath the tree trunk. I would’ve dug to China to escape all that hell and noise, but I’d lost my entrenching tool further back down the hill; back when the shelling started.
All I could do was pray to God the trunk would be enough to save me. And if it wasn’t, I prayed my death would be quick. I knew plenty of other guys who hadn’t been so lucky that day. Between the sounds of incoming shells and explosions, I could hear the screams and moans of my fellow Marines around me on the hillside.
If I hadn’t already screamed myself hoarse by then, I would’ve been screaming, too. There wasn’t any shame in it since no one could hear me anyway; not over the sound of the Kaiser’s artillery. Screaming was the only thing that relieved the pressure from the explosions.
I kept expecting my sergeant to call me a coward and drag me by the neck from behind that tree. The bastard had been yelling at me from the second I’d been assigned to his squad a week before. He’d been riding me all that morning, too, especially after the German snipers opened up on us. He even yelled at me after I shot three of them; demanding to know why I’d missed two. He yelled at me for not lobbing my grenade long enough and killing ten instead of just the five I took down.
He was still yelling at me when shrapnel from a German shell ripped him in half. I knew I should’ve felt something for the poor bastard. Relief that he was dead. Remorse that he’d died while yelling at me. But I didn’t feel a damned thing. I didn’t have time. I just stayed as low and as flat as I could against that tree and waited for the world to stop exploding.
Despite everything I’d seen, heard and smelled that morning, I never let go of my rifle. That much of my training had stuck. “Lose your rifle, lose your life,” they’d drilled into us before they shipped us over here.
But I’d already learned that much from walking a beat back in New York, so I didn’t need much convincing. I’d also been shot at plenty of times while on the job, so people trying to kill me didn’t bother me. I’d been kicked, punched, thrown around, had knives pulled on me, chairs, bats. Hell, I even had a guy threaten to blow us up with a stick of dynamite on a construction site once. I figured France would be like everything I’d faced back home, except with prettier girls and more trees.
I was wrong.
Nothing prepared me for the screaming or the blood or the artillery or the stench and misery of combat. Every exploding shell rattled my bones and my insides; making me feel parts of myself no man should feel. Every impact drove me one step closer to losing my mind. The only thing that kept me grounded was the feel of that Springfield rifle in my hand because I knew that rifle was my chance at living. It reminded me of who I was and what I was doing there. It was something real I could cling to while the world crumbled and burned.
It was also empty. I thought I had an extra clip in my pack or maybe I’d gone through that, too. Things had gotten real hazy real fast after I’d killed those Germans and the first shell went off. I couldn’t remember if I’d gone through my ammo or if I had any left. Hell, I’d even lost track of how long I’d been hiding there. It could’ve been five minutes. It could’ve been three hours. I didn’t know because it really didn’t matter. Nothing else mattered except that damned shelling.
I don’t know how long I’d been laying there before I realized the shelling had stopped. My ears were still ringing and I hadn’t been able to hear the blasts for some time, but I’d been able to feel the impact of the damned things well enough. I didn’t feel them anymore.
I shook my head; trying to clear it and realized my ears were clogged with dirt I was about to raise my head above the log and get my bearings when a hand pushed me flat as he dove behind the log as well. I felt chips of wood hit my helmet and I realized the shelling might’ve stopped, but we were still under fire. Fucking snipers.
I could tell from the man’s uniform he wasn’t just a fellow Marine, but an officer. A captain, but he wasn’t my captain. In fact, I’d never seen him before. I would’ve remembered him if I had. As a cop, I had a thing for remembering faces.
I could see he was yelling at me, but I still couldn’t hear what he was saying. I dug some of the dirt out of my ears and shook my head clear. My ears were still ringing, but I could hear more of what was going on around me.
“Keep your fucking head down, Corporal,” I heard the captain yell. “Now that the artillery’s let up, the bastards will be raking the forest with machine gun fire. Might even use mustard gas before they send in more infantry, so keep your mask handy.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, even though none of it made sense to me. I understood what he was saying, but it was a lot to take in all at once after cowering for my life.
Even through the dirt and grime on the captain’s face, I could tell he was around my age, maybe a bit older, but still in his mid-twenties. Somehow, he’d managed to make captain pretty quick, which meant he must’ve come from money.
I hated him already.
“What’s your name, Corporal?” the captain whispered.
That one was an easy question. “Corporal Charles Doherty of the Two-Nine, sir.”
“Good man. I’m Captain Devlin, special liaison between us and the French Army.” He threw a thumb over his left shoulder at a burly man with a Thompson kneeling behind a thick tree. “That dashing fellow over there is Lieutenant Mike Barrows. He’s not a very good shot, though, which is why we gave him the Tommy gun.”
“Fuck you, sir,” Barrows whispered back. “Nice to meet you, Doherty.”
I hadn’t heard of either Barrows or Devlin since I’d come to France, but that didn’t matter. They were two more marines than I’d seen in a long time and I didn’t mind the company. “Where’s the rest of your brigade, sir?”
“Dead,” he said. “Got shredded in the shelling as we came up the hill. Yours?”
I looked behind me, hoping to see some familiar faces. Stepnowski or Hyland or Biggs or DiNapoli. The only thing I saw were shattered trees and pieces of bodies sticking up out of the broken ground. I didn’t look long. “Same as yours, looks like. I hit a riverbed as a shell landed just behind me. I got thrown forward, then crawled out up here while everything went to shit. You two are the first people I’ve seen in hours.”
“It’s been less than an hour since they opened up on us,” Devlin told me. “It only feels longer. Still, you got a hell of a lot further than the rest of the outfit.” He nodded at my Springfield. “How are you on ammo?”
I ejected the magazine and looked at it. “Empty,” I admitted, “but I made every shot count. Grenades, too. There are about ten dead Germans over there that’ll bear that out.”
Devlin looked over at Barrows. “You see ten dead Germans, Lieutenant?”
Barrows snuck a look around the tree before quickly ducking back. “Who gives a shit? It’s the live ones I’m worried about.”
“I’m impressed, Corporal. Killing men’s tough when you’re trying to keep your head down.”
“I would’ve gotten more if that Kraut machine gun hadn’t opened up on me. And if the shelling hadn’t picked up again.”
“The bastards seem to have stopped for now,” Devlin said, “but we can’t count on that. I know how they think and they’ll be down here in a minute to make sure we’re dead. We need to move out by then.”
“I don’t think we’re going anywhere, sir.” I knew arguing with a captain was a dumb thing for a corporal to do, but this was my life we were talking about. “Not with that gunner out there.”
Devlin dug into his pocket and slapped a five-round clip into my hand. “Make those five count as much as you did the last ten, Charlie. That’s all I’ve got left for the moment.”
I started to hand the clip back to him, but he pushed it back at me. �
��Keep it. You’re probably better with that damned thing than I am. Always been better with pistols and knives.”
I tossed the dead cartridge, then slapped in the fresh one and levered a round into the chamber. “What are your orders, sir?”
“That depends.” Devlin whispered over to Barrows. “Any sign of Cain?”
Barrows nodded up the hill. “Looks like he’s made it about fifty yards straight ahead. I’m beginning to think that kid is part snake.”
I’d heard of a guy named Jimmy Cain in my outfit, but I’d never had much to do with him. Cain was also from New York. A distant sort of guy, but good with a rifle. Almost as good as me. “Cain’s from my outfit. Where’d you find him?”
“Came across him as we were making our way up here. He kept dodging tree to tree ahead of us, even while the shells kept turning everything to dust. Managed to get fifty yards ahead of us when we found you here. He’s in a shell crater right now, trying to get a fix on that machine gun nest up ahead.”
“Judging by how they’re shooting,” I said, “I wouldn’t put much on his chances.”
I heard a single shot ring out; clean and crisp like a snapping twig.
“Cain got the gunner,” Barrows reported. “Right between the fucking eyes.”
Another crack.
“Got the feeder, too.” Then, “Uh oh. Didn’t get him clean, though.”
That’s when I heard screams drift down the hill toward our position. “That bastard will bring every Heine in earshot down on us.”